Viaggiare lungo antichi tracciati attraverso le nuove tecnologie : un itinerario multimediale per la riscoperta del paesaggio storico lungo la Via Gallica

The historical landscape and cultural heritage as the object of communication might be considered always taking into account the socio-economic context and the targets of the process of information and knowledge transfer proposing alternative tourist opportunities, which can transform cultural assets into active features able to give a new perspective of understanding value and strategic potential of heritage for a sustainable territorial development. Today, the ability to revitalize and promote th e complex system of resources pertaining to a specific territory in order to develop cultural tourism is based on the identification of instruments that facilitate a more natural process of communication and connections between all the components involved in the mechanisms of composition of the cultural and tourist proposal in its widest sense. One of the design models used in recent years – employed with differing distinctive features in different territories and in various situations – is the cultural itinerary. It is not only a useful tool but also a dynamic model for cultural heritage enhancement, through which is possible an open and bottom-up approach to the landscape. It can also be applied to the field of archaeology, as experimented in Italy in a recent project financed by the Lombardy Regional Authority and developed by the ArcheoFrame Laboratory of IULM University, Milan, in partnership with five museums and the Lombardy Archaeology Superintendency. The project has involved the production of a historical and archaeological itinerary including five key places in north Italy (Milan, Como, Bergamo, Brescia, Lake Garda) and several other point of interests, in search of the line of the ancient “Via Gallica” (Gaulish Way) in use durin g the Roman and Early Medieval period. The itinerary is available to the general public by means of smartphone and tablet applications with innovative multimedia content, including videoclips, 3D scans of artefacts and augmented reality, and was designed according to the principle of sustainable mobility, so as to relocate visitor flows from the main town centres to the surrounding areas and stimulate the search for information about the manmade landscape and evidence of its historical development. The App is also enriched by a storytelling section in which four historical figures help the visitor to discover the places of which they speak through their own eyes and experiences, giving an overview of the various historical epochs.